Watching Creek wildfire northwest of Kamloops grows as ground crews can’t be safely deployed

KAMLOOPS — The Thompson Nicola Regional District (TNRD) has issued an evacuation alert for residents near the Watching Creek wildfire, about 15 kilometres northwest of Kamloops. The affected area is in the Lac du Bois grasslands protected area, including Pass Lake, Mcqueen Lake and Isobel Lake.

“Seems so far today, a little less fire behavior than yesterday. But, we are headed into the heat of the day,” said Kevin Skrepnek, TNRD Emergency Program Coordinator.

While not as noticeable as Monday, smoke can still be seen from the city of Kamloops as the Watching Creek wildfire grows. The wildfire of note is now listed at 195 hectares.

“Thankfully there aren’t any, as far as we know, there’s no homes in that area. There is the Mcqueen Lake Education facility so we have been in touch with the school district about that. It’s are understanding there is also a bit of a ranching camp there at pass lake as well,” added Skrepnek.

Camp sites in the area do remain open as the province has not restricted crown land in the area. At this time, only air support battling the fire, as it’s not safe for ground crews.

“Yesterday (Aug 1) our crews were working in quite steep terrain. The access that they had planned to use for in and out had been compromised by higher fire activity. That is mainly due to the high temperatures, wind driven fire behavior, and steep slops. For safety we had to remove them by helicopter late yesterday afternoon,” said Aydan Coray, BC Wildfire Information Officer.

The wildfire danger rating remains listed as ‘high’, but it varies depending on where within the Kamloops fire centre you are.

“The fire danger kind of depends on where you are in our region. So, valley bottoms do see drier, hotter temperatures. Where as the higher elevations can be more into the moderate area, high, at the same time the valley bottoms can be at extreme. So we kind of average all those things out and it’s currently high,” said Coray.

With temperatures expected to drop this week and humidity rise, the wildfire service is hopeful it will give crews the upper hand.

“I think this alert was a fairly precautious one, but understandable given the intensity of the fire behavior they were seeing out there yesterday,” said Skrepnek.

As of Wednesday (Aug 3), an incident management team will be assuming command of the wildfire.

It was confirmed that the three hectare fire south of Kamloops along Highway 1 was controlled through a joint effort of BC Wildfire, Kamloops Fire Rescue and New Afton fire services.

The Kamloops fire centre has announced that a full camp fire ban will be instituted in the region, effective at 12 P.M. on Thursday, August 4th.